March 15 - 17, 2019

Metaphysics of Software Design

Saturday - Mar 16 9:00 AM
- WINCHESTER

Matt Stine

Global CTO - Software Architecture at Pivotal

NOTE: THIS IS A DISCUSSION ORIENTED SESSION. THERE WILL BE MINIMAL LECTURE AND SLIDES.

According to Wikipedia, metaphysics is the branch of philosophy that studies the essence of a thing. This definition invites the question, “Does software design have an essence?” And if it does, would the discovery and understanding of this essence lead to a fundamental improvement in our ability to build well-designed software? Does design matter? What exactly is the design of software? Can we point to it? Or is it something immaterial?

These are the types of questions that I want to confront in this session. We’ll draw inspiration from various individuals, from Don Norman to Fred Brooks to Jack Reeves to Christopher Alexander. We’ll consider their explorations of design, both in and out of the software realm. But ultimately, we’re going to have a conversation inspired by the Dialogues of Plato, and each iteration of this session will arrive at its own conclusions.

Matt is obsessed with the idea that enterprise IT “doesn’t have to suck,” and spends much of his time thinking about lean/agile software development methodologies, DevOps, architectural principles/patterns/practices, and programming paradigms, in an attempt to find the perfect storm of techniques that will allow corporate IT departments to not only function like startup companies but also create software that delights users while maintaining a high degree of conceptual integrity. He is currently the Global CTO of Architecture at Pivotal, and spends much of his time advising IT leadership on the effective adoption of cloud-native architectures.